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Jay Williams, Walcom-Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies.
Jay Williams, Walcom-Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies.

A collecting hobby that started just three years ago for Walcott-Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies Jay Williams has grown into a passion. And luckily for the Hamilton community, Williams is sharing his hobby this holiday season. Williams collects woodblock prints by Thomas Nast (1840-1902), perhaps best known as America's first great political cartoonist, but also the man responsible for creating the image of Santa Claus as we know him. Williams' collection of Nast's Santa prints is currently on exhibit at the Emerson Gallery, through Dec. 21.

Thomas Nast was an accomplished illustrator and cartoonist who is credited with creating the Democratic donkey, the Republican elephant and Uncle Sam. But at this time of year it's the twinkling-eyed, jolly Santas that capture one's attention. Williams' collection  shows the evolution of Nast's Santa from the 1860s to 1879. It was that year that Nast portrayed Santa as a smiling, white-bearded jolly man in a red suit, surrounded by children on the cover of Harper's Weekly. Williams says this version of Santa was inspired by Clement Moore's "A Visit From Saint Nicholas." And, it's this image that has shaped today's vision of Santa Claus.  Williams says he doesn't have one favorite among his collection but does particularly like that first Harper's Weekly cover, titled "Merry Christmas."

Williams began his collecting quite by accident. Three years ago he was at a Hamilton alumni gathering in New Jersey and the talk turned to Nast, who had lived near there. Another Hamilton alumnus overheard the conversation and told Williams he was closing up a print shop that had a collection of Nast's work and that he'd send him any that were left over. Not long after, Williams received a package of 20 engravings in the mail. The alumnus wishes to remain anonymous, but can be credited with helping Williams start his hobby.

It didn't take long for Williams to catch the collecting bug. "Someone put me onto E-bay which regularly offers Nast works for sale, and many are inexpensive," he said. Williams' collection now numbers around 250, which include political cartoons as well as images of Santa Claus. His collection has grown too big to display at home – he keeps them in folders and scrap books. "I could cover every wall of my house with them," he laughed. Some prints from his collection are hanging at the Oneida County Historical Society.

An avid student of Nast, Williams takes great pleasure in pointing out how the artist used the Clement Moore classic as inspiration in the prints – tiny mice sleeping in beds, sugarplums dancing around sleeping childrens' heads, Santa coming down a chimney, reading a stack of letters and hoisting a bag full of toys. He noted that Nast continued to refine his Santa, adding reindeer, and in a later print two children examining a map of the North Pole, which was the first time it was acknowledged as Santa's home and workshop.

Williams will be on leave for the Spring semester and plans to spend some time doing research for a book he hopes to write about Thomas Nast. "I want to do something different from the other books about him. I want to look at Nast as a mirror of late 19th century American values."

Until that book is published we can thank Williams for sharing his collection of images of the Santa Claus that has fired our imaginations for decades and provided generations of children a vision of the jolly man in the red suit.

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